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ON POWER
**************************************
Men in a position of power need flattery
as much as a starving man needs bread.
Their intolerance and hatred of dissent
is rooted in vanity and not
in some kind of ideological opposition.
They don’t give a damn about ideas and ideologies
which they consider a waste of time.
To them intellectuals are no better than children
and ideas their invisible toys or
verbal hallucinations or ghosts
and they don’t believe in ghosts.
Words are good only when they glorify
and flatter their egos.
In their own eyes power is a blessing from God.
It follows, whatever they do
bears God’s seal of approval.
Hence degenerate rulers
and moronic multimillionaires
operating on the assumption
they are the uncrowned kings of the community.
*
History is clear on this point.
Power drives men mad.
Power is not a blessing but a curse.
At the turn of the last century
in the Ottoman Empire the sultan
had a thousand concubines
and as many versifiers,
among them Armenians,
singing his praises.
*
Talaat was more enlightened.
He counted among his friends
several intellectuals
among them our own Zohrab.
But as soon as he acquired power
he had Zohrab assassinated.
Napoleon put it best when he said
“A man with an idea is my enemy.”
#
MORE ON TURCOCENTRISM
*********************************************
Turcocentrism may also be defined
as an ideology that says
we are not the architects of our destiny.
It follows, the only logical explanation
of our misfortunes is: “Shit happens.”
*
Consider earthquakes as a case in point.
What we are not told is that
according to experts
“Earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do.”
*
Nothing comes more naturally
to a compulsive and habitual liar than
to cover up and to lie.
*
The priority of all businessmen is profit.
The more profit the better.
Likewise, the priority of all politicians
regardless of race, color and creed is power –
the more power the merrier,
even if it means the destruction of the nation.
*
Our dealers in chauvinist crapola
expect us to believe
what applies to all politicians
does not apply to our own
who rule and divide by the grace of God.
#
FOREIGNER
***********************
To me, the ultimate odar (foreigner)
is the Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenian.
*
ON SURVIVAL
********************
We have survived – no one denies that –
but survived as what?
*
PARADOX
*************************
Armenians who classify themselves as the best,
sooner or later expose themselves as the worst.
#
“We are a people like any other people.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
#
ZOHRAB & CHARENTS
**********************************
“We are a people like any other people.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.
Even our greatest intellectuals and poets,
like Zohrab and Charents, were dupes
of enemy propaganda.”
“What would you have done in their place?”
“Probably what they did and having done so
I would deserve universal ridicule and contempt.”
*
SAROYAN
*********************
I will never forget the angry letter
one of our elder statesmen sent me
after reading one of my anti-Soviet tirades:
“Saroyan loves the regime.
You think you are smarter than Saroyan?”
*
GUILTY AS CHARGED
*****************************
You say I simplify complexities?
What does propaganda do?
What is propaganda if not the mother tongue
of self-satisfied idiots and their dupes?
*
GUILTY AS CHARGED II
*************************************
“You repeat yourself.”
“Not as often as our propagandists.”
#

WHO IS A GOOD ARMENIAN?
*******************************************
Sartre: “It is the rich man who is virtuous
and wants everyone else to be.
His values are a defense if the status quo.”
*
Everyone is against dividers,
but everyone seems to be for the status quo,
especially if he belongs to the privileged classes –
namely bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted hirelings and dupes.
*
Who is a good Armenian?
“An Armenian who has Mt. Ararat in his heart,”
-- whatever the hell that means.
*
I am not a Biblical scholar
but the scholars I have consulted inform me
the Bible does not mention “Mt. Ararat.”
It says “mountains of Urartu,”
of which there are about a thousand
and most of them are not in Armenia.
#
CAREER MOVES
*******************************
For a good number of years
my sole ambition in life
was to be a brown-nosier.
It took me quite a few years
to realize it was a bad choice –
and bad not on moral grounds
but bad because
the competition was too stiff.
*
MEMO
TO MY PATRIOTIC READERS
*********************************************
The difference between you and me
is that you like to brag
and I don’t.
#
OUR LORDS AND MASTERS
**************************************
Some readers,
among them former friends,
disagree with me for an
understandably compelling reason:
they are financially dependent
on the charity of swine.
They may preach freedom
but they are afraid
not only of free speech
but also of fellow Armenians
who engage in it.
*
Our political and religious leaders
are neither God’s nor people’s servants;
they are our Lords and Masters.
Deviate an inch
and you are shish-kebab!
#

A SKETCH OF MY LIFE
*************************************
In my formative years
I was carefully brought up to be a garbage can
Of prejudices, lies, and propaganda.
If I understand my fellow Armenians today
it may be because once upon a time
I was one of them
and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
*
It was very late in life
that I realized deep inside somewhere
I harbored a human being.
*
I wasted most of my life
trying to please individuals
whom I now classify as somewhere between
moral riffraff and the scum of the earth.
*
When I say I loathe dupes
what I really mean is that
I loathe the dupe in me.
The only thing I am willing to brag about
is the fact that in my childhood
I experienced homelessness, destitution,
war, and discrimination in an alien environment.
*
Did I survive?
Who can really tell?
I feel more like that English soldier
on the battlefield who,
when informed by his king that he was wounded,
replied: “Nay, Sire, I am dead.”
#
RECYCLING
**************************
To live in oppression means to believe in things
that you don’t and to trust the judgment of individuals
with the morality of pimps.
As a nation we have lived in oppression
for so many centuries that
we are no longer in a position to tell
the difference between
freedom and oppression.
Hence the saying:
“Once upon a time we were slaves;
we are now slaves of former slaves.”
Progress is our least important product.
*
One of the most useful tools
in criminal investigations is to ask:
“Who benefits?”
Who benefits from our divisions?
*
“A bourgeois is a bourgeois
regardless of nationality,” Lenin said.
So is a divider, a charlatan, and a deceiver.
*
“You repeat yourself.”
So do our dealers in chauvinist crapola.
*
I don’t write to achieve fame, fortune,
and immortality.
I write to share my understanding.
#
WHAT I BELIEVE
***********************************
I believe in the Incomprehensible,
the Unknowable and in the commandment
“Thou shalt not bear false witness.
As for “Thou shalt not kill”:
I believe a system that has legitimized
the burning of heretics and more recently
war and massacre is an invention of the Devil.
The rest is metaphysics, mumbo jumbo,
propaganda, and taxation without representation.
*
My aim in life is not to achieve
fame, fortune, and greatness
but to be less dishonest.
*
As the offspring of perennial losers,
I have a soft spot for all losers
even when they are identified as the enemy.
#
TRASHLAND
**********************
If Gogol and Kafka were to come back to life and collaborate on a book about reality in present-day Armenia, the result would be Denis Donikian’s VIDURES or AGHPASTAN, in Ruzanna Vartanian’s excellent Armenian translation (403 pages, Yerevan, 2013).
Aghpastan, literally Trashland, is a biting satire and a horror story written with withering wit that utilizes many genres and styles reminiscent of James Joyce.
*
During a walk two friends discover the corpse of a woman in a garbage dump, an obvious victim of foul play.
“I know who she is,” one of them says. “I recognize her by her hair and the undamaged side of her face. We should go to the cops.”
The other is outraged.
“The cops! The cops? Can you picture me walking into a police station? Walking in is easy. The trick is coming out. And sometimes you never come out.”
“But it is against the law not to report a murder. If we ignore this murder and another murder next day, what happens if you or I are the next victims? If you and I and everybody else ignores a murder we become a nation of amnesiacs at the mercy of others.”
“Maybe so -- but what happens if we are detained by the police? And when I say detained I don’t mean for an hour or a day but for months. Think of my piglets: what happens to them?”
The conclusion is obvious: “Aghpastan” has become a country that swims in crime, criminals, executioners, and their victims.
*
The book begins and ends with the same two words: “Der Voghormia” (Lord have mercy).
#

********************************
INTERVIEW
****************************************
Q: Raffi writes about bad as well as good Armenians.
You write only about the bad. Why?
A: Raffi was a great writer and a good man.
Obviously I am not qualified to tie his shoes.
Q: If propaganda is bad, why so many engage in it?
A: So many also engage in adultery, drugs,
smoking, war and massacre.
You see, like you, I have more questions than answers.
Q: Is it true that you love Turks and hate Armenians?
A: I hate all liars and dupes regardless of nationality.
Q: Why are you against patriotism?
A: Because the ultimate aim of all patriotism is slaughter.
I therefore say: F*** politicians who motivated by lust for power
invent conflicts and brainwash the brainless.
#
TRYING TO MAKE SENSE
************************************
Leaders are first and foremost moronizing agents.
The world is being systematically moronized today
by Americans as surely as
the Middle East and the Balkans were moronized
by the Ottomans and the Soviet republics
were sodomized by the Russians.
*
What we think of ourselves
is never the same as what others think of us.
In that sense we are not much different from the groupie
who once declared:
“I am not a groupie! I don’t have sex with the boys.
I don’t use my body. I only do blow jobs.”
*
The secret ambition of all victims is to be a victimizer.
This may explain why an Armenian
is another Armenian’s Turk.
*
Where propaganda is over-developed,
literature will be under-developed,
and in our case, non-existent!
#
MEMO TO MY CRITICS
********************************************
Please note that I hate neither myself
nor my fellow countrymen.
What I really hate is the Turk in all of us
and when I speak of Turks
I don’t mean Turks as they are
but as they appear to be in our history
and collective experience.
*
READERS
***********************
I don’t write for readers who know better.
I write for readers who know as much as I did
when I was a dupe.
*
ON A COMMON FALLACY
**************************************
We all share the same illusion:
namely, that people will judge us by our propaganda
and not by our history.
*
ON LITERATURE
*********************************
There is nothing wrong in admiring great writers
provided you remind yourself that
even the great ones, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky,
had their share of contradictions
which they could not resolve.
*
MORE ON PATRIOTISM
***********************************
A patriotic Armenian,
like a patriotic Turk,
knows very little or almost nothing
about the history of his nation
and most of what he knows is a lie.
*
ON INFALLIBILITY
*******************************
Arrogance and ignorance
are at the root of all infallible assertions.
*
TO BE NOTED
****************************
Compared to non-existence,
existence lasts no more than a fraction of a second.
#
BROTHERS
*****************************
Thomas Mann is right.
Hitler was not an alien creature but “a brother.”
There is a Sultan and a Talaat in all of us.
*
ON FRIENDSHIP
***************************
I have so few friends that if I were to lose one
I would be friendless.
*
SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT
*************************************
I have been hired and fired many times
but I have never hired and fired anyone.
*
ON SPEECHIFIERS
AND SERMONIZERS
**********************************************
There is a natural tendency
in all speechifiers and sermonizers
to underestimate the value
of dialogue, compromise, and consensus.
*
ON FRIENDSHIP (II)
**********************************
Because I write as I do,
my patriotic friends pretend we have never met.
*
ON SURVIVAL
************************
Perhaps to be an Armenian means
to be a survivor with a gaping wound.
*
ON DUPES
******************
One of the hardest things in life
is to convince the average idiot
that he is not a patriot but a dupe.
#
ALL BARK AND NO BITE
*********************************
It could be said of our Turcocentric ghazetajis
that they are all bark and no bite.
Something similar could also be said
of Armenian literature from the Golden Age
to the present. As for our speechifiers and sermonizers:
they at least make a more or less comfortable living.
*
As a child I trusted adults if only because
whenever I asked an inconvenient
or difficulty question I was told
“You’ll find out when you grow up.”
*
In a recent issue of an Armenian academic periodical
I read the reviews of six recently published books,
five of them about the Genocide.
*
What’s being done to arrest or slow down
the present rate of assimilation in the Diaspora
and exodus from the Homeland?
I am grown up and I still don’t have
the answer to that question.
But if you do, please feel free to share it with us.
#
MORE QUESTIONS
THAN ANSWERS
***************************************
Is there a single Armenian
in a position of power today
whom you trust?
Someone you would go to for advice?
Someone you would vote for
if he were running for office?
Someone you don’t suspect of being
a former KGB, CIA or both?
*
Three sure ways of improving
a writer’s reputation of work:
verbal abuse, censorship, starvation.
*
Why are superstition and propaganda
more believable than science and knowledge?
*
Jews have acquired the reputation of a people
that enjoy mutual support.
The same cannot be said of Armenians.
#
FROM ALPHA
TO OMEDGA
********************************
If cathedrals are concrete and towering proofs
of man’s faith in the existence of God,
what are wars and massacres?
*
As for free will;
it may apply to the Napoleons
and Hitlers of the world
but not to the average soldier
who does the killing and dying;
and certainly not to the civilian casualties.
*
The question, the real question, is not
whether God exists or not
but whether He gives a damn!
*
Am I shaped by my past
or by my projects and hopes for the future?
After I answer metaphysical questions
I see more merit in their contradictions.
*
When the weak are led by the ruthless,
the result will be a succession of catastrophes,
that is to say, history as we know it.

ON POPULARITY
******************************
Popularity is overrated.
Neither Socrates nor Jesus was popular.
Bach was neglected for a hundred years.
Kafka was known only to a handful
of close friends.
Hegel’s last famous words:
“No one understood me except one,
and even he didn’t understand me.”
My guess is Elvis and the Beatles
made more money in a year than
Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms combined
throughout their lifetime.
*
Have I said this before?
No matter.
Some things are worth repeating.
#
HOW TO BE OBJETIVE
***********************************
The only way to be objective
is to see oneself through alien eyes.
The alternative is to view Catholics
through the eyes of the Pope,
the Soviets through the eyes of Stalin,
and the Chinese through the eye of Mao
on the grounds that these gentlemen know better.
*
One of the most important rules in dialogue:
neither side is allowed to say “Yes, sir!”
*
Ideas like “All men are created equal,”
should be judged by their history
and not by their intentions.
*
Archie Bunker is dead,
long live the Tea Party!
#

ON LAWYERS
& RELATED ATROCITIES
************************************
Where lawyers prosper, justice suffers.
The function of a jury, it has been said,
is to decide which side had the more competent
legal representation.
*
Where advertisers prosper,
the line that separates fact from illusion
will be blurred.
*
Where there is great wealth,
there will also be crooks.
Plato’s explanation for this phenomenon:
unlike honest men who will employ only honest means,
crooks will employ honest as well as dishonest means.
*
We live in a land of bankers, investment brokers,
public relations men, advertisers and lawyers.
It follows, we are in deep sh*t.
#
BOOK REVIEW
***********************
130 TALISMANS. By Kardash Onnig.
Foreword by Alexander Boccialini Shundi.
Illustrated. 2013. Published by Baraka
(P.O. Box 145, Stanfordville, NY 12581).
**************************************
Are talismans, also known as “charms,” objects with mystical powers over evil or mumbo jumbo? My reason tells me they belong to the mumbo jumbo department of life, but my subconscious sings a different tune.
After a black cat crosses my path, I feel better if I find a penny on the sidewalk. Accuse me of being superstitious and I will deny it. Figure that one out if you can.
This illustrated booklet of 130 talismans is the latest opus by our Renaissance man of arts and letters, Onnig Kardash. Each talisman costs $400.00. If they weren’t beyond my income bracket I would love to buy a dozen of them (one for each room in the house) and forever after feel less vulnerable.
(For more information write to Transformer @gmail.com).
#

Everything that needs to be said has been said. The role of our propaganda today is to deceive us into thinking everything that needs to be done is being done when in fact nothing is being done.

*

DECEPTION (II)

In our official version of the story the Genocide was inevitable. Which raises the question: if our leaders cannot foresee the inevitable, what are they good for besides raising funds?

*

OVERHEARD

***********************

“Make friends when you don’t need them.”

*

“You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.”

#

TWO OBSERVATIONS

********************************

If a closed mind makes you happy, by all means, follow your bliss. Only be warned. A fool’s happiness is a house without foundations.

*

In the eyes of some I am a self-hating Armenian because I refuse to rely on the support of men who could be useful to me – bosses, bishops, benefactors, their hirelings, hangers on and dupes. They fail to see the obvious: if I am against these gentlemen it is out of self-respect, and I suggest self-respect and self-hatred are mutually exclusive concepts.

#

ON THE ORIGINS

OF PATRIOTISM

*********************************

If I had a choice between visiting Venice or Paris and the ugly little Greek slum where I was born and raised, I would choose the slum but I can’t because it’s no longer there – it was reduced to rubble by the Germans during World War II.

*

My doubts outnumber my certainties a thousand to one. I am one of those who feel guilty even when they say the right thing and do what must be done.

HOW TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS
**************************************
Tribal divisions are not a verdict without appeal.
All we need is a Mandela.
If Africans can do it, why can’t we?
To those who say,”
Why don’t you apply for the job?”
I say: I am a failure as a writer.
I would be a disaster as a political leader.
My job consists in telling it like it is.
Mandela?
Hell, we couldn’t even come up with an Ataturk.
#
IN PRAISE OF OLD AGE
***********************************
I have been young
and I have been old
and old is better.
*
If you are young and you assume to be right,
you will be closer to the truth
if you assume to be not just wrong
but dead wrong; so wrong, in fact,
that you may have to spend the rest of your life
suffering the consequences of your blunder.
*
One advantage of old age is that
you exercise more freedom
in your choice of misery.
*
I write for dupes and idiots like myself
when young.
#
EXPLANATIONS
***********************************
If you have trouble understanding why
successive American administrations
have refused to recognize the reality of the Genocide
here are some easily accessible explanations:
Even when dead wrong, might is right.
(Please note, I don’t make rules;
I only state them as I see them.)
Empires speaks a language
tribal people don’t understand.
Taking care of #1 is their #1 concern.
Regimes don’t have principles, only interests.
If you refuse to see the light
it may be because you prefer to live in darkness
(isn’t that what we did for 600 years?)
Ignorance is a heavy burden.
Lincoln was wrong.
You can fool all the people all the time.
Consider the long history of organized religions
According to Toynbee
(who quotes the Bible on almost every page he writes)
our demands were unreasonable.
It follows; the Turks did what they did
because they had no other choice.
To those who dismiss my short list
of explanations as bullshit,
allow me to quote another familiar proverb:
“Life is a shit sandwich.
The more bread you have
the less shit you eat.”
#
NOISE
****************************
The Chinese pictograph for noise
is three women under the same roof –
or so I remember to have read somewhere.
The same word in an imaginary Armenian pictograph:
two men.
*
Homo sapiens? Hell, no!
Homo capable of being sapiens? Maybe.
*
Compared to nothingness
(before we were born and after we die)
being is an ephemeral dot so tiny
that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.
One is almost tempted to say
the reason we exist is to experience
our own insignificance or nothingness.
*
When two selfish individuals meet,
they learn the importance of altruism.
#

comments

THE DEFENSE
************************
The Turkish line of defense is simplicity itself:
“We did to the Armenians what you did to your Indians.”
*
The only people who refuse to acknowledge
the finality of this statement are our fund-raisers and
Hai Tahd (Armenian Case) tax collectors.
*
If the Greeks in their Golden Age ...
found Socrates guilty of a capital offense
and executed him,
how dare we hope we can get justice
from a jury of convicted liars and cut-throats?
#
ON STATESMANSHIP
****************************************
You say he was a great statesman?
Tell me, how many of our problems did he solve?
A statesman is first and foremost a man of action:
he formulates and implements policies
which he can do only after developing a consensus.
*
You say Armenians are ungovernable?
In that case a statesman’s function is
to make the ungovernable governable.
If he cannot do what must be done,
he is a failure or, at best, a man not of action
but of contemplation.
He is more like Naregatsi
and less like Gandhi, Churchill, and Mandela.
*
“He was a man of vision, a great patriot,
sincere in his commitments to ideals?”
So were Hitler, Mussolini, and Mustapha Kemal Ataturk.
#
A STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING
*******************************************
When asked to name his favorite role model,
one of our intellectuals
(let’s call him Comrade Panchoonie)
named one of our benefactors
(let’s call him Jack S. Avanakian)
and was amply rewarded.
*
SHAHAN SHAHNOUR SPEAKS
****************************************
"A French whore is a whore.
A German whore is a whore.
A Greek whore is a whore.
But a whore who writes is an intellectual."
*
QUESTION
***********************
To the anonymous critic
who reads and curses everything I write:
“Are you the one I once called an inbred moron?”
*
JUST A GUESS
**************************
I wouldn’t be surprised if they said:
“Let’s do to our Armenians
what the Americans did to their Indians.”
But I would be surprised
if one of our revolutionaries said:
“What if they do to us
what the Americans did to their Indians?”
#

BAH-HUMBUG
*********************************
Where would the 1% be
without the full cooperation, dedication, and hard work
of the 99%?
*
To be a good Armenian it is not necessary
to be a bad human being with a closed mind.
*
Crooks have their uses:
they make us appreciate the importance of honesty.
*
Being smart also means not repeating idiotlc blunders
like dividing the community
and abusing children by brainwashing them
to brag about our genius for survival.
#
MEMO TO A WRITER
*******************************
If you say the opposite
of what your average reader wants to hear
you can’t go wrong.
*
ON POPULARITY
***********************
Popularity is an American aberration
and best-sellers the surest symptoms of mediocrity.
*
A CRITIC SPEAKS
***************************
“You have been writing for thirty years now
and you have changed nothing,”
a reader writes implying
either shut up or change your tune.
Change begins in the heart
and what happens there doesn’t make headlines,
neither does it penetrate the hick skulls
of those in a position to change things,
especially if the status quo has been good to them.
*
WHY ENGLISH?
*******************************
I write in English because 99% of what I write
would be considered unprintable by our 1%.
#
My greatest liability:
I never mastered the art
of flattering the powerful and the rich --
i.e. the scum of the earth.
#
Was Santa good to you?
*
Both capitalism and communism
have been good to their 1%.
What does that tell you
about ideologies and belief systems?
*
My own answer:
They introduce meaningless divisions
even when they know the result may be
the slaughter of countless innocent victims;
even when they have been warned
“a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
#
TO MY CRITICS
******************************
Gentle reader:
Unlike you, I don’t pretend to speak the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Think of me only as the voice of another school of thought.
*
Knowledge and understanding are not your enemies.
There is no need for you to defend yourself against them.
*
To think that you can speak the truth
and be popular is an American fallacy.
*
So many first-class literary works
have been rejected by publishers
or ignored by the public that
one is tempted to define writing
as composing music for the deaf.
#
A HISTORY OF DECEPTION
***********************************
Turks have been successful in convincing the Yanks
(a) we are their Red Indians, and
(b) whenever we don’t get our way
we engage in acts of terrorists;
which is what happened in the Ottoman Empire
at the turn of the last century and more recently
all over the world including America.
*
DUPES
****************
We are born dupes.
First we believe in the friendly disposition
of the Young Turks and now
we believe our own leaders
when they tell us with our financial support
they will have the Genocide recognized by the Yanks.
*
DUPES (II)
******************
Where would tyrants be
without cowardly dupes?
*
Q
*******************
“Melonsmellonous osculations.”
Can you guess what’s being said
and the identity of the author?
#
LESSONS
*****************
If history teaches us anything it is this:
we can be wrong;
we can be wrong even when we are right;
we can be dead wrong even when
God and the Great Powers are on our side.
*
The #1 concern of our 1% is not to solve our problems
but to defend and protect their powers and privileges,
which means Plan B only for themselves.
*
My ideal reader is one who hates to read;
which means he has been at the mercy
of speechifiers and sermonizers and is thus
virgin territory easily impregnated with new ideas.
*
When I was young, unemployed and unemployable,
two senior members of the Party came to see me.
Someone had told them I love books and reading.
“We are willing to subsidize your university education,”
they said, “provided you agree to work for us.”
Meaning: We have no use for your garbage;
we have our own.
Which may explain my present status
as an abominable no man.
Mart bidi ch’ellank!
#

ON WEALTH
******************************
Someone like Obama could never be as wealthy
as someone like Romney because, according to Plato,
an honest man will employ only honest means
and a dishonest man will employ honest
as well as dishonest means to amass his fortune.
I am not saying Plato speaks the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but.
All I am doing is paraphrasing an opinion
and an opinion is not a dead end
but only a tentative beginning.
*
ON MORMONISM
*******************************
Shaw says somewhere
all professions are conspiracies against the laity.
Likewise, all religions may be said to be
conspiracies against all other religions.
The same applies to ideologies
and closed systems of thought.
*
MORE ON OBAMA
****************************
He made many mistakes?
Maybe. But had he done the opposite of what he did,
he would have been impeached.
Who wants a pope in the White House?
#
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
****************************************
If you speak the truth you will be contradicted not only by liars but also by dupes and idiots.
*
I don’t understand everything. Only god does; and if god wanted me to understand everything he would have created not men but gods.
*
For every truth there is a lie and sometimes a thousand of them.
*
A man who is his own worst enemy cannot be anyone’s friend.
*
The closer I get to the final answer the more certain I feel of my final failure.
*
Two mosquitoes may achieve more than one; a thousand of them may inflict serious damage.
#
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
**************************************
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!
****************************
...to one and all!
*
ON LEADERSHIP
**************************
Political leaders hate to admit error. Hence the existence of hirelings – meant to say, nationalist historians – and the importance of patriotism which is easily confused with loyalty to the leadership even when the leaders happen to be swine.
*
ON COMFORT & JOY
******************************
When told I am a comfort to our enemies, I say, we are a greater comfort when we divide ourselves.
*
ON HUMAN NATURE
**************************
No matter what you say, you will get on someone’s nerves. Consider what happened to Socrates and Jesus. You say that was then and this is now? I say: technology may change but human nature stays the same. There are as many violations of human rights today as there were in the 5th century BC and 1st century AD.
#
INTOLERANCE
************************
Intolerance makes men stupid. You can guess a man’s IQ fairly accurately by the manner in which he welcomes new ideas.
*
At least once every day we should remind ourselves of the vastness of the universe and our own insignificance in it.
*
Inaction can create as many problems as wrong action.
*
Some of the greatest men in the history of mankind were persecuted, even executed, for daring to challenge the authority of the 1%. What does that tell you about the IQ of mankind?
#
ON POPULAR MUSIC
************************************
Popular music is incapable of achieving greatness.
*
There is something fundamentally wrong in a culture whose musical standards are set by teenagers and the CEOs of the recording industry.
*
I am reminded of the king who, after visiting America, said he was impressed by the manner in which parents obeyed their children.
*
One of the things that I love about America is the readiness with which they acknowledge their “ugly” specimens. There is even a best-selling book titled THE UGLY AMERICAN and a movie based on it with Marlon Brando in the title role.
#
NOTES & COMMENTS
************************************
As a child I don’t remember an adult saying “I don’t know.” What they said was “You’ll find out when you grow up.”
*
I don’t write for readers; I write against them beginning with myself.
*
As a failure I am free; as a success I may be a slave to my success. Isn’t that what happened to Arlen and Saroyan?
*
When we divide ourselves the message we send to our enemies is: “No need to kill us; we are committing suicide.”
*
Armenians may be said to have a Turkish problem. I am that rarest of all Armenians: an Armenian with Armenian problems.
*
In a disagreement, you cannot defeat your adversary by insulting him; you can only expose your own limitations and inability to entertain new ideas.
#
ON WRITING
****************************
The best opening line is the one you delete, according to Chekhov who probably wrote more opening lines than any other writer.
*
I remember to have read somewhere, as soon as you write a brilliant line, delete it. As far as I know, Simenon, one of the most successful and prolific writers of all time, never wrote a single brilliant line in his life.
*
Q
**********
Who benefits from wars, volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis? Surely, not God. Who then? Is Mother Nature in cahoots with the Devil? What else?
*
ON PROFIT
*****************
If you are in the business of making money, your greatest assets are the ignorance and stupidity of the masses. Something similar could be said of politics.
*
PARTY DISCIPLINE
***************************
It has happened to the best of my childhood friends. On their own they were more like wolves; but after joining a political party, they turned into sheep. Were they emasculated by party discipline?
#


Sunday, January 12, 2014
***************************************
THOMAS MANN SPEAKS
**************************************
Where there is too much talk of love, there will be very little love.
Who will dare to disagree with Thomas Mann (who probably wrote more about music than any other major modern writer) when he said:
“The past half century has witnessed a regression of humanity, a chilling atrophy of culture, a frightening decrease in civility, decency, sense of justice, loyalty, and faith, and of the most elementary trustworthiness.”
#
ON MARRIAGE
**********************
Even if you marry the most beautiful woman in the world,
sooner or later she will stink of garlic.
Richard Burton on Elizabeth Taylor in his recently published diary:
“She stinks of garlic – who has garlic for breakfast?”
He probably stank of booze morning, noon, and night.
#
AS I SEE IT
***********************
There is no such thing as a lovable nation.
For every American who loves Armenians
there will be at least two or more who love Turks.
*
I was the most disappointed man on earth
when I met my first Turk.
He was short, skinny, and timid.
No fez. No yataghan. No shalvars. No bloodshot eyes.
*
When a face in the crowd smiles and says hello,
the chances are it’s to the fellow behind you.
*
Books changed my worldview
but music changed my life.
I became a church organist.
*
Where the art of advertisement is developed,
the brain will be underdeveloped.
*
There is an Armenian Christian heresy that believes
the world was created not by God but the Devil.
The evidence is overwhelming.
*
A generation of dupes will be followed by another.
#
FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS
**********************************
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”
“I could have been a contender.”
Can you identify the following two? “Gee, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines!” and “The cat is in the bag and the bag is in the river.”
#
ON COWARDICE
*****************************
If you speak in the name of patriotism, do so only in time of peace.
Attack only individuals who are in no position to defend themselves.
Attack anonymously and from a safe distance.
*
ON BEING AN ARMENIAN WRITER
***************************************
As a failure you will be despised. As a success you will be hated unto death.
*
TWINS
******************
To be corrupt and incompetent are Siamese.
*
MEN AND WOMEN
****************************
On their own they can be good; it’s when they get together that the excrement hits the ventilator.
*
YOU WANT TO BE POPULAR?
**************************************
Recycle a fashionable propaganda line – like Bolshevik shit under Stalin and Nazi crap under Hitler…
*
POLITICS
*********************
To be in politics means to expose the double-talk of the opposition and to cover your own triple-talk.
#
CONSPIRACY
****************************
Ever since I was born as an Armenian,
there has been a carefully orchestrated conspiracy
to convince me that being an Armenian
is a rare privilege and I should consider myself
the luckiest of men.
The question that I cannot answer to this day is:
Are members of this conspiracy
our saviors or our grave-diggers?
*
If “a man is another man’s wolf,”
is not an Armenian another Armenian’s Turk?”
#

Sunday, January 26, 2014
**************************************
THE BLAME GAME…
AMONG OTHER THINGS.
*****************************************
If you master the rules of the blame-game
you can easily represent yourself as a statesman of vision
and the opposition as a cesspool
of corruption, incompetence and stupidity.
*
When in doubt
I always do that which is against my own interests.
*
Whatever I have done,
I have done out of necessity and under duress.
The choice was thrust on me
the way subservience is thrust on the 99%.
*
Bishops, imams, rabbis:
they share a common wish to be trusted and respected,
but they neither trust nor respect one another.
*
If a single man can be wrong,
so can two or two thousand or two million,
especially when they speak of
the Incomprehensible and the Unknowable.
*
The Scriptures tell us to turn the other cheek
not to drop our pants...
*
We are midgets perched on the shoulders
of lesser midgets.
*
We are told there are two kinds of statistics,
lies and damn lies.
What about belief systems?
#
ALPHA MALES
****************************
Bosses, bishops, benefactors:
alpha males whose #1 concern is #1.
The rest is propaganda.
*
PATRIOTISM
*****************************
There are Armenians – and I know some of them myself –
who view intolerance, ignorance, and stupidity
as authentic expressions of their patriotism
and moral superiority.
*
DIALOGUE
*******************
In dialogue there are no losers
because both sides learn from each other.
Which may explain why dialogue
happens to be quintessentially un-Armenian.
*
WRITING
*********************
I write.
It’s an inexpensive hobby – the cheapest I know.
It costs me nothing.
#
ON WHAT WE KNOW
*************************************
Nobody knows everything about anything.
Some of the worst blunders in the history of mankind
were committed by very smart men
(self-assessed, of course) who thought
they knew all there is to know about the enemy.
*
We know now that even Wall Street
doesn’t know everything about Wall Street.
*
The 99% hate the 1% -- their secret role models.
*
The 1% are at their best
when it comes to deceiving and exploiting the 99%.
*
We like to pretend we know more about ourselves
than anyone else until we are cornered, assaulted and defeated
by our own irrational impulses.
*
Once upon a time we were ruled by kings.
We are now ruled by moneyed morons
with the charisma of apes.
*
There are always two schools of thought
and we tend to favor the school
that is more favorable to our vanity.
*
We say “shit happens”
even when we micro-managed the catastrophe.
#
AS I SEE IT
******************************
Leaders: Blind men who pretend to have 20/20 vision.
*
There are two kinds of failures:
(a) those who make less than minimum wage
(Armenian writers come readily to mind) and
(b) those who make a million a day (guess who).
*
In the eyes of the 99% the 1% might as well be Turks.
*
Speaking of Turks:
We know what they did to us.
My question is: What did we do to them?
If something, what?
If nothing, why not?
*
You tell me I simplify complexities?
Am I then the only one?
*
More on the 1%:
Two reasons they are free men:
(a) They can afford a dream team, and
(b) they know the judge.
*
A headline in my morning paper:
“Neanderthal genes found in modern humans.”
So what else is new?
#
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
***********************************************
Justice is on the side of the more competent lawyers
in the same way that victory is one the side of bigger battalions.
*
Turks don’t need a dream team.
They have Yanks on their side.
*
My philosophy of writing?
To be readable.
*
I don’t write to make you feel good.
What I do is hold up a mirror
and make you wish you were dead.
*
Some problems don’t get solved
because we don’t have a clear awareness of their existence.
*
There are truths which we take for granted
until we consider their contradiction.
*
The 1% are dead men who will do anything
to keep their money beginning with staying alive.
*
Progress is possible in all branches of human endeavor
except religion.
*
A single pope can brainwash millions of Catholics
but not a single imam.
#
A WORTHY AMBITION
********************************
The secret ambition of every Muslim terrorist
is to defeat America and to acquire a harem
of Hollywood starlets.
*
THE TYRANNY OF RELATIVITY
***************************************
Virtues like self-reliance, initiative, originality and perseverance
in the wrong hands become dangerous vices.
*
85% VERSUS 86%
******************************
We are told 85% of TV commercials are misleading
and the law can’t put a stop to that
because law-makers (i.e. politicians)
mislead the people 86% of the time.
*
WHAT THEY SHARE
*****************************
Defeats are planned as carefully as victories.
#

ALPHA MALES
****************************
Bosses, bishops, benefactors:
alpha males whose #1 concern is #1.
The rest is propaganda.
*
PATRIOTISM
*****************************
There are Armenians – and I know some of them myself –
who view intolerance, ignorance, and stupidity
as authentic expressions of their patriotism
and moral superiority.
*
DIALOGUE
*******************
In dialogue there are no losers
because both sides learn from each other.
Which may explain why dialogue
happens to be quintessentially un-Armenian.
*
WRITING
*********************
I write.
It’s an inexpensive hobby – the cheapest I know.
It costs me nothing.
#

ON WHAT WE KNOW
*************************************
Nobody knows everything about anything.
Some of the worst blunders in the history of mankind
were committed by very smart men
(self-assessed, of course) who thought
they knew all there is to know about the enemy.
*
We know now that even Wall Street
doesn’t know everything about Wall Street.
*
The 99% hate the 1% -- their secret role models.
*
The 1% are at their best
when it comes to deceiving and exploiting the 99%.
*
We like to pretend we know more about ourselves
than anyone else until we are cornered, assaulted and defeated
by our own irrational impulses.
*
Once upon a time we were ruled by kings.
We are now ruled by moneyed morons
with the charisma of apes.
*
There are always two schools of thought
and we tend to favor the school
that is more favorable to our vanity.
*
We say “shit happens”
even when we micro-managed the catastrophe.
#